Data can be sent wirelessly to multiple users in a variety of ways. The data can be sent unicast, or “end-to-end,” in which data is sent by a provider (e.g., a digital content provider on the Internet) and routed through the Internet, cellular core network, and directly to the end user. When multiple users request the same data from the same cell site at substantially the same time or request a live stream, however, the data can be sent by the provider, through the Internet, cellular core network, and broadcast to multiple users at the same time. In other words, though the data is being sent to multiple users, it need only be transmitted once by a particular cell site.
Wireless broadcast is an efficient method to deliver data to multiple users, compared with sending unicast to each member individually. Technologies such as Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) and Long-Term Evolution Broadcast (LTE-B) have leveraged internet protocol (IP) multicast in the transport network to quickly replicate data packets from a content provider server towards the cell site, or wireless base station (WBS)—e.g., eNodeB.
To enable the data from the content provider to be sent to multiple cell sites, the data is first replicated by the network. Moving replication from the origin server to the network leverages efficiencies in the network, but only if that network efficiently supports IP multicast. Due to the complexity and variability in the modern cellular core network, however, supporting IP multicast in the network can be problematic.